


No Rest For The Righteous

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (movie) compliant - ???, Character Study, F/M, Light Angst, Love, Minor Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 03:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21067718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: There's a woman Steve wants to have openly; he can't.





	No Rest For The Righteous

"Nobody has to know."

She's a spy, used to keeping secrets. She's got a reputation to keep, one that doesn't involve being known to fuck Captain America. She's a modern woman, without the expectation that he'll marry her and father her children and live with him as though she's proud to have him.

Steve knows all this.

It still hurts.

To Maria's credit, she knows she's said the wrong thing as soon as the silence falls behind her. She turns with her shirt still unbuttoned, the black lace of her bra peeking through the open edges, cupping the slight swell of her breast, her hands falling to her sides as she realises the truth. "You don't want this to be a secret."

"No." Steve's not made to keep secrets like that. He's not made to be kept secret like that.

For a few seconds, Maria seems lost, as though the ground has fallen out from beneath her feet. Did she look like that the moment she realised that Coulson was dead, that S.H.I.E.L.D was HYDRA, that the Avengers had lost to Ultron in South Africa? She looks like that the moment she realises Steve Rogers might sleep in her bed, but he'll never suffer being kept a secret.

"Steve... We can't..." Then, more carefully, "_I_ can't have a relationship with you that everyone knows about."

"I know."

"I can't give up who I am - not even for this. That's not the kind of woman I am."

Steve climbs from the bed, naked but unwilling to stop and put clothes on. He takes her arms gently because he wants to shake her for not being able to accept him as he is, and he wants to yank her against him and try to change her mind. But they're not those kinds of people. He knows how fragile a woman's reputation is, even now, and he knows what his friendship has already cost her.

Maria can't go public with him, but Steve won't be kept a secret. This is who they are, where they're at, how it ends.

It hurts.

"I know, Maria," he murmurs against her cheek. "I know."

In the end they don't say goodbye, they just kind of drift away, unable to bear the reality of their differences.

* * *

He went into the ice just after meeting the love of his life.

He goes back to her, after it's all done.

* * *

It hurts worse the second time, perhaps because he brought this on himself.

After the first disbelieving run of her hands over him, the unfettered delight in her eyes, the flush of kisses, Peggy wants to share his return. Of course she does. "We have to tell the Howling Commandos - Jonesy, Dum Dum, Jim— God, Colonel Phillips will be overjoyed—!"

Steve's heart stutters and stops. A chain of links makes the final connection, and he realises what he didn't see before. "Peggy. We can't— Nobody can know about this."

"Nobody can—?" Peggy looks at him, blank and bewildered. "Steve, why not?"

Because he knows what she becomes: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, a burning flame in international intelligence, the woman who did everything better than J Edgar Hoover in high heels and a skirt. In the future that's already in his past, Peggy shines like a comet in the night sky.

And she shines because she never had to live with the shadow of Steve Rogers over her.

_Actually, I'm not so sure that Fury trusts me so much anymore, _Nat said with a wry glance Steve's way when Sam made a joke about Fury finding them somewhere to stay. _Things have been different since we brought S.H.I.E.L.D down._

_In a room full of S.H.I.E.L.D agents, Jasper questioned my loyalties because of you. _Maria hadn't sugared her bitterness. _Because I'm 'just' a woman and therefore my head could be turned by a pretty face and a hot body._

_I'm under investigation since Berlin,_ Sharon texted, the letters shorn of any emotion. _I'll call you when I'm out._

She never did.

Nowhere - _nowhere_ \- was there even a hint that Peggy was ever Steve Rogers' wife or lover after the war. Not in the newspapers, not in S.H.I.E.L.D's most secret files, not in any of HYDRA's databanks, not even in Peggy's ramblings about their shared past as dementia took her mind... Nothing. So far as anyone knew, Steve Rogers went down in the ice and that was that. And Peggy becomes the woman she does _because _she's not trapped in the shadow of Steve Rogers.

"All right," she says when he explains all this - as carefully as he can, without giving her any spoilers. "If we can't tell anyone about this, then we'll keep you beneath the radar. Nobody has to know—"

_Nobody has to know._

And here he is, back at square one again, with a woman he wants to have openly - and can't.

And this time it's worse.

"Peggy..."

She hears the hesitation in his voice, realises the conflict. Grief dawns on her face like the morning after a battle. “You know the future. But you're not supposed to change anything.”

If Steve stays, he can't fight for the right of people like Sam to drink at the same water fountains and attend the same schools. If Steve stays, he's not allowed to stand up and argue that people like Natasha should be treated like people who matter, too. If Steve stays, he won't be able to step forward and defend the right of queer people to love whom they will and be recognised for what they are.

His hands will be tied, unable to fight the bullies who would make life difficult for those who don't fit their mold, who just want to watch someone else struggle, who take satisfaction in the suffering of others...

Yes, he can stay here, marry Peggy, love her for the rest of their lives...but he can't be Captain America. He won't be following the part of his heart that made him the man Abraham Erskine chose to take the serum. He won't be worthy of his shield, of Mjolnir, of the trust that people put in him to do the right thing and be the good man they believed he was.

"I didn't think..." He steadies his voice. "I didn't think this through." Too busy reeling from everything that was lost, everything that was regained, the endless struggle of living in the future, of feeling _cheated_ of the life that he should have had - the chance to live that life that Tony got to live...

_The war is over, Steve; we can go home now..._

But with or without the war, they are what they are, and love is not enough to overcome that. 

He can't give up who he is, even for this. That's not the kind of man he is. And he won't steal Peggy's future, especially not since he knows what she becomes.

He looks at Peggy, at the earthy beauty of her - grounded in the here and now, determined to make a difference - and he loves her. He will always love her, the woman who could have meant so much more to the man he never got to be and now, never _can _be.

They won't live happily ever after - not together, not the way they could have - but Steve will keep his promise.

He steps back, steps away, and holds out his hand to her. "May I have this dance?"

This time, at least, they both know this is the end.

* * *

He heads back to the future after saying goodbye to the love of his past.

He has nowhere else to go.

* * *

"_Nobody has to know_?"

Maria stares at him, her expression flat, her gaze glittering like a diamond as she sits in the dingy office tucked away in a run-down strip mall where Steve has tracked her over the last few days. Her first instinct was to reach for the phone. He stopped her.

"World security is in shambles; Tony and Nat are dead, Nick's jaunted off out into the galaxy with Carol, and Wakanda's a political mess since M'Baku took the throne while T'Challa was gone. We've got ex-Stark employees running around with stolen equipment, Barton's making noises about going to get Nat back, and Sam's still getting used to the weight of the shield that you - your older self who let us believe you stayed in the past - left him. Pepper is struggling to hold it all together while she and Morgan grieve the loss of Tony, and it's not in Brunnhilde's jurisdiction to manage Earth even if Thor did leave her as the Queen of Asgard! And then you turn up _again_ only to say _nobody has to know—_"

Steve stops her rant with his mouth.

It's not accidental. It's not polite. It's not nice. He's still angry at what he's lost, and Maria is a convenient outlet for his frustration. But it helps that she doesn't kiss him back, doesn't give way, doesn't melt against him. Instead she bites him hard enough to draw blood - hard enough to jolt him from balls to bones, to make him jerk back in shock.

"That," she says in icy tones, "was so _completely _out of line that I can't believe you even—"

The next moment she has her gun whipped out and pointed at his heart. Steve's hands are up - he started putting them up the instant she reached for her weapon. "It's me, Maria. Swear to God, it's _me_. You nearly punched me for Phil after New York, the helmet was squeezing your brain, and I gave you my jacket at Tony's party and it smelled of you for a month afterwards." Her eyes narrow; it's not enough. Steve pulls out the big guns. "You wanted to keep us a secret. I said 'no'."

Maria stares. Twin flags of color rise in her cheeks as she lowers the gun. "It smelled of me for a _month_?"

Of course she alights on _that_.

"Laundry wasn't a priority." And he liked the scent of her on his clothing. Which isn't something he can say right now - it's not the time or place for it. "No-one can know I'm back, Maria."

If it was a moment for laughing, Steve would - if he had any laughter left in him. The irony stings like the buzz of the shock wand because he's _already come back. _He came back as an old man, full of smiles and a life that he lived and took joy in. He handed the shield to Sam, said goodbye to Bucky, and vanished like mist in the morning.

Looking at Maria now, Steve thinks the part she's most angry about is that the older version of him didn't stick around to help sort things out. Which...he fully understands. He's mad at himself, too. And the part he's most angry about is that his older self let everyone believe he stayed in the past, let everyone think he lived his life out with Peggy, and sat his ass out on every terrible thing that happened to humanity for the last seventy years.

Considering the wounds of staring at Peggy and Peggy staring at him realising just how much they would have to sacrifice to be together is still fresh, Steve is _furious_ that his older self thought it was okay allowing people to think he opted out of protecting the world for something as basic as a wife, family, kids. Even Tony came back to world security eventually.

Okay, _and _he's annoyed that his older self didn't hang around to tell Steve what happens next.

Although he has a few ideas about that.

"And how do you plan to manage that?"

It's a good opening, Steve takes it.

"Sam has the shield now - the shield that the other me carried," he adds she gives 'his' shield a look with lifted brows. "He's making a name for himself elsewhere, doing his own thing. I don't want to overshadow him."

Steve sees the importance of Sam taking up the shield, of being the visible and visual symbol of a protector. _Freedom's Falcon_ is just one of the news headings he's skimmed the last eight hours, and Steve's glad. He wants Sam to be the new Captain America - the symbol of the new world, hanging in there, rebuilding itself after a fall. There's nobody better to take up the shield and take up the fight - not even Bucky.

"So...what? What else are you going to do?"

For Maria, it goes without saying that Steve will do _something_. That he wasn't made to live a quiet life, whether as the little guy from Brooklyn or Abraham Erskine's successful super-soldier. And it's a relief to know and be known. To be understood and comprehended in this time and this place - and, Steve realises, to be himself in the here and now, even if it isn't in the public eye.

"I can help you do world security again - the quieter side of world security."

"How do you know I'm going to take on world security again?"

Steve gives her a look. Managing superheroes is what she does, what she was made for. No less than Peggy, Maria was born for this work, and while the job may not be glamourous or elegant or publically acknowledged, she's going to do it. Peggy worked with what she had - a woman in a hostile world - and made S.H.I.E.L.D. Nat worked with what she had - a working facility in a broken world - and kept the Avengers going. Now Maria will work with what she has - the scraps and scrapings of the Avengers - and protect what she can with what's left.

Maria sighs. "I need someone to keep an eye on the current state of world politics. Someone who's been alive for the last five years. I can't ask Rhodey to do it - he's too busy trying to get the world military's hands off their metaphorical and literal little red buttons. I was going to ask your older version to do it, but..."

"But?"

"The whole 'vanishing into the ether' part is a significant barrier." Maria drags a hand through her hair. "And now I have to wonder _when_ he's going to turn up, and not just _where_. I'm starting to think it's like Baby's First Time Travel Moebius Strip around here - nobody knows who's coming or going, when or where or how. It was enough trouble trying to keep track of _where_ you lot were. Trying to keep track of _when_ you are as well is a whole new series of migraines..."

"So having me work with you will be one less." Steve can't quite help a wry smile as she gives him a hard look. "Look, if everyone thinks I'm gone, then they won't be looking for me like this."

"True."

"And you need someone who can work undercover, unnoticed. I can do that. I haven't always," he admits at her snort of derision, "but I can. And I will." Maria's staring at him, frowning a little. "What?"

"You don't want to be a secret. Or you never used to be willing..." She pauses. "Will you tell me what happened?"

She sees too much - she always did.

"You were right," he says at last. "I couldn't hang up the shield. I could let it go, but I couldn't give it up - not even for Peggy. I..." He hesitates. "I couldn't give up who I am for who she was meant to be. That's not the man I am."

For a moment he thinks she doesn't even remember what she said to him all those years ago. Then the tips of her ears go faintly pink, and she looks away for a moment, then nods. "Okay. Well, I'm still working out how it's all going to operate now that Nick's gone but when I do—"

"No." He cuts through her dismissal. "I'm staying. And when you go, I'm coming with you."

Maria blinks, long lashes resting heavy over her eyes as though she's counting to ten for patience. "Steve, we're not just going to resume our affair—"

"I never said we were." Although he won't try to stop it if they do. But if Fury's gone, he's not going to leave her to do this alone. He’s had to walk away from two women he loved – one of them for forever. This time, at least, it doesn’t have to be permanent. "I'm still coming with you."

* * *

Steve lives in the present and it's a gift.

Maybe it’s not the kind of life Tony had, but then, he’s not Tony. It’s a life he wants – it’s a life he’s content to live with a woman he's content to love.

And nobody - well, nearly nobody - knows.

_How do we keep this love a secret - _  
_How do we keep it in the dark?_  
_And if we dared to share our weakness_  
_How could we tear ourselves apart?_  
  
_How do we keep this love together?_  
_Didn't we know right from the start_  
_That we would have to keep this secret - _  
_Or forever stay apart..._

_~'Secret' by Heart~_


End file.
